


between the striking and the fire

by perculious



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Kissing, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:06:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4507110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perculious/pseuds/perculious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Jesus,” Ronan says. His eyebrows are still raised, and his mouth quirks up at the corner, amused. It looks like one of the sharp, lethal twists of his tattoo. “Am I the only one not harboring secret desires around here?”</p><p>(mostly Adam/Ronan and Adam/Gansey, but with a lot of extras on the fringes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	between the striking and the fire

**Author's Note:**

> super lots of thanks to tumblr users yakdad and zeegoesthere for beta'ing this for me. you can hit me up on tumblr at iwillbeyourhands!

"We're dating," Ronan says, sliding into the booth next to Adam and slinging his warm arm around his neck.

Adam glances sideways at Gansey to see how he'll react. Gansey just blinks at them, blandly surprised, his eyebrows raised and his eyes completely blank. After a moment he seems to reboot and his mouth turns up in a smile.

"That's great!" he says. "I'm so happy for you!" And that's Gansey, falling all over himself for his friends' well-being.

But the thing is: it's a lie. It's in the tilt of Gansey's shoulders, the slight crease between his eyebrows, the way he pauses when he meets Adam's gaze, like he's watching his step. Adam knows Gansey well enough to see it, and the lie burrows into his chest, a termite chewing out a rotten little home for itself.

Ronan is all relaxed, loose-limbed and magnanimous ever since Adam first kissed him. Ronan's dial only has two settings: laid-back and burning out. Since they talked this thing out, he's been the best version of Ronan, the glorious, shining god of a boy, his sharp edges rounded out by helpless little smiles. Ronan Lynch has never sat still a second in his life, and his hands are restless as they chat with Gansey, brushing the hollow of Adam's back where it curves away from the plastic booth, his thumb rubbing the back of Adam's neck for a second before settling on Adam's shoulder. He wants Gansey to see, Adam realizes, because he's proud of being with Adam. Because he thinks being with Adam is something to be proud of. Adam's stomach twists around itself, not sure how to negotiate how Ronan makes him feel when they're sitting in a grubby-floored, fluorescent-lit pizza joint and Richard Gansey III's eyelids flicker whenever Ronan touches him.

Things with Ronan are simple, much simpler than Adam expected. Ronan is a lightning storm in the form of a boy, a natural disaster continuously happening to the people around him, and Adam doesn’t get involved with disasters he can see coming. But since he embraced being the Greywaren, Ronan's changed—not gentled, not slowed, but directed his energy differently. Adam is part Cabeswater, and when he's around Ronan, it feels like things growing.

Adam wants to bring Ronan back into the safe closed quarters of his little room by the church, to stretch the impossible event that is Ronan Lynch out on his bed and kiss his dark mouth until he feels like he can be impossible too, a forest and a person and a magician and a mechanic all at once. It's too much to contain in the open space of Nino's, filled with the warm presence of Aglionby bodies and scented with herbs and sharp cheese.

Gansey is talking about the ley line, his eyes too bright, and Adam fights the urge to close his eyes and sink into the feeling of moss on his back.

Blue steps up to their table, her notepad clutched in one hand and the other fisted on her hip. She's wearing a T-shirt cut into a slash-neck and floral print leggings, and her hair clips are all dark green and purple.

"Do you think this is fun for me?" she says, pulling a pen from where it's lodged in a twist of her hair. "Do you think this is like a fun hangout time for me? When you guys come here and I have to serve you?"

"Come on, Jane," Gansey says, and it cuts Adam to the vein to see how his face lurches into real happiness. "Don't think of it as serving us. Think of it as us serving you. We just couldn't stay away."

Blue points at Ronan. "This one always balls up the straw wrappers and leaves paper bits all over the floor. Don't do it."

"Someone's not getting a tip," Ronan says.

"That's not funny." Blue shoots an aggrieved look at Adam, and he rolls his eyes at her. He sees her face change as she takes in Ronan's knee pressed against his under the table, and Ronan's fingers resting on his's wrist.

"We're a thing," Adam says, before the change can resolve itself into something good or bad. His pulse pounds in his throat. "A—relationship. Thing. Me and Ronan."

Blue claps a hand over her mouth. "Oh my god!" she says. "Really? Oh my god! I knew it! Did he ask you or the other way around?"

"Parrish begged," Ronan says, with a horrible jack o’lantern grin. Adam kicks his ankle under the table.

"It's just that if Ronan asked, Noah owes me five dollars," Blue says.

"Where is he gonna get five dollars," Ronan says, "he's _dead_."

"So you _did_ ask," Noah's voice pipes up. Ronan jumps, his elbow smacking Adam's side, and then Noah's there on the other side of Ronan, looking small and smudged and pleased.

"Don't be rude," Gansey says. "Dead people can have things just like the rest of us."

"No, they can't. That's why we have inheritance laws. They legally can't," Ronan says. "If Noah had five dollars it would technically belong to his next of kin or something."

Noah flips him off, and then leans across him to mutter "I know whose room I'm stealing five dollars from" into Adam's right ear. His breath is cold. Maybe it's not breath, just the feeling of Noah wafting in Adam's direction.

"Are you going to order food, or just sit here until I have to kick you out?" Blue demands.

They order food and the conversation comes back around to Glendower, as it always does. Adam relaxes a fraction, putting his hand over Ronan's when Ronan rests it on his knee and lacing their fingers together. Gansey's in fine form, talking animatedly about his latest theory. The facade doesn't slip for a second, and that's what eats away the edges of the hole in Adam's chest. It's perfect, glossy Gansey who he's talking to, magazine cover Gansey, yacht club Gansey, not his friend. Adam's locked out of real Gansey for now, exiled from Eden for some incomprehensible transgression.

All at once it makes anger flare up. He doesn't need Gansey's approval. He squeezes Ronan's hand and sets his jaw, determined not to care.

-

When Gansey gets back to Monmouth, Noah is already there, although he didn't come back with Gansey. It gives Gansey a tired feeling to see him, sitting cross-legged on the floor by Gansey's bed, flipping through one of the ley line books. It takes him a moment to source the feeling, as Noah is a fairly benign occurrence. But he was looking forward, he realizes, to having a moment alone. Gansey usually values being in his friends' space more than solitude; it's why he has his bed in the Monmouth Manufacturing common space, a place other people open doors into, not a place Gansey can shut a door from. But there's something odd today, a nagging, hitching feeling in his ribcage like he's left the tag on inside a piece of clothing. He wants space to figure it out, pin it down the way he would a theory about Glendower.

"Hi," he says anyway. He sits heavily in his desk chair and props a foot up on one of the drawers, running a finger over the top edge of his journal. It comforts him.

Noah just nods in response, although Gansey's sure he can't really be engaged in _Portents of Supernatural Activity: A Compendium_. Noah is uniquely difficult to read, even though Noah always seems to be able to read everyone else with a precision that falls right between “empathetic” and “unsettlingly inhuman.” The thought collides with another in Gansey's mind and sparks something else, leading him to edge his chair a little closer to Noah, although he really should be starting his homework.

"Did you, um," he says, something in his chest fluttering like a bird about to take off. "Did you know? About Ronan and Adam?" He doesn't understand why even asking the question makes him feel guilty and furtive, like he's prodding at something he shouldn't. Ronan and Adam are his best friends, and it's a casual enough question.

Noah looks up, his eyes glittering. The unearthly quality Noah has makes his features strange: cheekbones too prominent, skin too pale, pupils too dark. It’s oddly beautiful. "I know a lot of things," he says.

It's not an answer. "How, exactly?" Gansey says. His thumb goes to his bottom lip without thinking, rubbing it briefly. "I mean, how do you know things? Is it a—a ghost thing?" He hopes it isn't rude to ask; his throat tightens with the fear that it might be. His parents always told him it was rude to draw attention to others' differences. It's part of why he messed up so much with Adam at first, he thinks—it turned out to be an abysmal strategy to conduct himself like he wasn’t aware Adam didn’t have the money he did. Gansey's parents never taught him about proper etiquette for communicating with the dead.

"I don't know," Noah says. "When you're a ghost, everything is a ghost thing. I just know things. I can feel them."

"But how specific does that get?" Gansey urges, leaning forward a little in his chair. "Do you know facts about people, or is it just like a feeling? Intuition? Like being a psychic?"

"Feelings," Noah says. "Sometimes more. I don't know." He shrugs a shoulder, a self-conscious gesture, but continues. "It's like looking at someone and knowing whether they're old or young. Blonde or brunette. Things people feel are a part of them."

Gansey chews on his bottom lip, his face tensing into a slight frown. Because if Noah can sense how people feel, then maybe he knows about the _thing_ , the ambiguous wrongness. The part of Gansey that's shying away from the thought of Ronan and Adam, slamming the door shut every time he tries to think about them being together. He loves both of them, and he's thought, often, that other people should love them—that the world would be a better place if people recognized and embraced Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish the way Gansey knows they deserve. But there's just something about them dating, like Gansey stepped forward and found the ground a foot lower than he expected. It doesn't fit right inside him, and Gansey doesn't know which parts of him are in conflict with it. The whole thing makes him uneasy and frustrated. He should be happy; it's the response a good friend should have.

Maybe he's not a good friend.

If it was anyone else—like Adam or Blue—Gansey would hate the thought of them peering into the mass of writhing fears and exploding hypotheses that comprises his inner life. But Noah feels—has always felt—safe. Maybe it’s the way he holds himself apart, the way he never seems to fully participate, that makes Gansey feel like the confessions he’s spilled out to Noah in the cool dark of his room at night just vanish into the air. Noah won’t hate him; Noah won’t hurt him.

“Oh,” he says, and it comes out strangely heavy. He sighs, feeling his shoulders slump. The uneasy spark in his chest flares up, fanned by the thought of exposure.

“It’s not my intention to find out people’s secrets,” Noah says, eyeing him through blond, almost white lashes. “It’s just that sometimes, they’re loud. Especially around Blue. Especially _Blue’s_.”

“Blue’s secrets?” Gansey’s tortured heart crunches up further.

“Blue’s feelings.”

Same thing, Gansey thinks, and is pierced by an intense longing for the ability to make other people make sense to him. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees so he’s closer to eye level with Noah. Noah blinks up at him, almost as substantial as Noah gets, but still somehow small, reduced; maybe it’s just who Noah is.

“What about my feelings?” Gansey says, and again the sensation comes over him like they’re treading on dangerous ground. He fights the urge to lower his voice.

Noah just smiles at him. “Did _you_ know about Ronan and Adam?” he says.

Gansey’s entire torso seizes. He regrets bringing this up.

“Well,” he says, “ _no_. I don’t go around speculating. That would be...” He trails off, uncertain what that would be.

Noah just hums noncommittally, looking down at the book again with interest he barely bothers trying to feign.

Gansey’s poised on the edge of something, like the edge of his desk chair pressing a crease into the backs of his thighs. There’s something in him that longs to be uncovered, and he’s aware that it’s not new; it’s been pressing at the insides of his chest for a long time now, but he’s never dragged it out to look at it. It’s something to do with the way Adam and Blue’s legs used to touch in the backseat of the Pig, or the way Ronan used to run off and Gansey knew he was with Kavinsky. This indistinct wrongness in the pit of his stomach, this grasping possessiveness.

Adam and Ronan are dating, he thinks, and all of a sudden, it actually hurts. It’s a bright, pulsing pain right in the center of his chest. Gansey blinks, more out of confusion than anything else; he doesn’t want to think about this and he doesn’t really want to be around Adam and Ronan when they’re touching under the table like they were at Nino’s.

“Oh,” he says, his voice pitched a little too high. He rubs the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “Oh, _shit_.” Oh god, oh god.

“I can’t answer a question you don’t ask,” Noah’s soft voice intones, reaching through the panic that’s building up in Gansey’s temples.

Gansey drops his hand and stares at Noah, frozen with distress. “Am I _jealous?_ ”

“That’s not the question,” Noah says, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “That’s obvious.”

Gansey shakes his head minutely. “No,” he says. “It’s not. I shouldn’t be jealous. Why am I jealous? What is _wrong_ with me?”

There’s an icy feeling on his hand, like it’s been plunged into cold water. He looks down—Noah’s closed his fingers around Gansey’s. “That’s a good question,” he says, with some satisfaction.

-

Cabeswater has given them a lazy summer day. Lush green grass grows where the leaf canopy isn’t too heavy, and the dark earth under the trees is cool and damp and spotted with moss.

It’s hot. Adam’s skin is sticky with sweat where his bare shoulder presses against Ronan’s, and a light breeze cools the perspiration on the back of his neck. Ronan is propped up with his back against a tree and Adam’s leaning over him, the moss cool against his kneecaps, kissing Ronan’s mouth and cupping his face, his other hand linked with Ronan’s on the moist dirt.

This hasn’t ceased to be magic, like the way Cabeswater itself feels when it unfurls in the center of Adam’s ribcage. Ronan is so soft under him—Ronan, who Adam has seen brush his teeth like it’s an aggravated assault.

Adam’s still not ready to be soft in return. It’s a small revelation just to let himself want, just to let himself have what he wants. He wants to kiss Ronan, and to feel Ronan’s jaw work under his hand. He wants to feel the undercurrent of electricity that sparks under Ronan’s skin—not magic, but vitality, raw life, which seems so much stronger in Ronan than in himself. Ronan is volatile, but this one thing is sweetly secure: he likes Adam, and he wants him. Wanting is so easy for Ronan.

After a while Adam draws away, sitting back on his heels. Ronan looks up at him—his face looks younger, somehow. Adam’s gut twists. He flexes his fingers where they’re intertwined with Ronan’s on the ground.

He feels a little guilty being here without Gansey. Gansey loves Cabeswater with the ferocity that can only come from desperation. He spends all of his life, which most people would call extraordinary, searching for ways to feel special, and Cabeswater is his best discovery. But things are different for Adam since the sacrifice. Cabeswater’s not just a source of Glendower information anymore. It isn’t a place for him to go, it’s a thing he is, and whether it’s safe or necessary to go there just isn’t a question.

He was worried about changing past the point where his friends could follow. He was worried the first time he brought Ronan here that the mystery of Cabeswater would overwhelm whatever fledgling thing exists between them. But here’s Ronan, whole and alive and seemingly brighter against the dark trees, and when Adam presses his hand to Ronan’s chest he feels the ley line pulse through Ronan’s heartbeat.

“Making sure I’m still alive?” Ronan says, ruining it. “You’re not that good, Parrish.”

“Making sure you’re still a dick,” Adam says.

“Does my pulse tell you about that?”

“Yeah,” Adam says. “It spells out _fuck you_ in Morse code.”

Ronan grins horribly, delighted. “Weird thing for it to say when you’re sticking your hands all over my chest. Are you sure you got the second word right?”

Adam’s mouth warps in a way that might be a smile, but it’s hard to tell. He feels different when Ronan looks at him, like Ronan’s gaze refracts and changes him when it hits his angles. Ronan Lynch has more vicious faith than anyone Adam’s ever met—it’s what surprised him when they first met, to see it applied to the belief that Gansey was right about Glendower—and now it’s focused on Adam being worthy, a precious thing. It feels like a mistake. Adam can only take it in by fractions.

“Hey,” he says, his voice low. “Listen. Do you think Gansey was acting weird before? At Nino’s?” It’s gnawed at him since they left, poisoning the center of his heart black.

To his shock, Ronan laughs. Adam instinctively draws back, his shoulders hardening with defensive tension.

“Yeah,” Ronan says. “Which of us do you think he’s into?”

Adam hesitates. “What?”

“He’s obviously into one of us,” Ronan says.

Adam doesn’t do things he hasn’t considered, so he doesn’t react beyond creasing his brow a fraction. His body is very still. “What do you mean?”

“Oh my god,” Ronan says. “His fucking dead fish eyes when he was pretending to be happy. He was like a cow in a slaughterhouse. Do you think it’s you or me he’s pining after?”

Adam doesn’t move. His fingers against Ronan’s twitch involuntarily. “Why does he have to be pining after one of us?” he says. “I thought he just–I thought maybe he just—didn’t... like it.” His voice sounds odd to his own ears, or maybe it just sounds faraway.

Ronan laughs again, a harsh little snort of air through his nose, like a cough. “What, like he’s homophobic? No. That was pure Richard Gansey emotional panic. He had a thought that was unapproved by the higher committee of how to be Gansey, so he went into Congressional mode. That was caucus campaigning in Iowa levels of fake enthusiasm. He has it bad for one of us. I hope it’s me.”

The sound of Adam’s heart pounding fills his whole head. It’s not Ronan, he thinks, it’s not Ronan, because he would know if Gansey felt that way about Ronan. Adam watches Gansey; Adam would know. It’s not Ronan who Gansey has it bad for.

“Whoa,” Ronan says. Adam blinks and looks down; there are thin, spidery vines snaking their way down the tree trunk Ronan’s leaning against, twisting their way up Ronan’s and Adam’s wrists, dark shiny leaves bursting forth from the stems. “Down, boy,” Ronan says.

Adam pulls his hand back from Ronan’s, shaking his wrist free. The vines cling unpleasantly to the sensitive skin on the inside of his wrist, and he has the awful, chilling sensation of fingers pulling at him.

“You’re wrong,” Adam says. His voice is dead and flat, affectless, and he thinks: Congressional mode. Is that what he’s doing? His body feels heavy, like he’s pressing something down. It is, he realizes, something he feels a lot when he’s talking to Gansey: the pressure to contain himself, to keep it all in.

“Whoa,” Ronan says again, his eyes wide, eyebrows inching up his forehead. It makes it worse to look at him, so Adam closes his eyes. His breath is too loud.

 _It can’t be me_ , Adam thinks. _It can’t be me he likes, because._

“Are you okay?” Ronan says—caught somewhere between sincerity and mocking, like he hasn’t figured out which Ronan he’s supposed to be right now.

_Because he could have had me._

Is he supposed to talk to Ronan about this? Is that what dating someone means?

“Parrish.” Ronan’s landed on sincerity now, his voice low and urgent. “Adam.”

“I’m fine,” Adam says shortly, opening his eyes. He’s irritated that Ronan’s being the sweeter, softer Ronan right now, when Adam’s close to cracking. He needs Ronan’s hardness to bounce off of, to ground himself—that’s the role Ronan plays in his life. “But you’re wrong,” he says again. “I don’t know what’s up with Gansey, but him being into—it doesn’t make sense.”

“Jesus,” Ronan says. His eyebrows are still raised, and his mouth quirks up at the corner, amused. It looks like one of the sharp, lethal twists of his tattoo. “Am I the only one not harboring secret desires around here?”

Everything in Adam crushes together, his insides crowding each other out. He swallows, and something sticks at the back of his throat.

“I’m,” he says, but then stops: Adam doesn’t do anything he hasn’t considered.

It all bleeds together, the wants and needs and desires and what-ifs, the things he can never have, the things he’s ashamed of himself for wishing he had, the things he can’t let himself even dream about because he has to be realistic. It doesn’t matter what he wants when he lives as an ascetic. And now that he’s let himself have something, here are the consequences. He wants too much; he can’t parcel it out. He let himself be with Ronan, and now he’s going to hurt Ronan.

“Okay, calm down, Poison Ivy,” Ronan says. “No need to break out the Parrish ritual self-flagellation instruments. You’re allowed to be into Gansey.”

“I’m not,” Adam says, but it sounds weak, and his neck flushes hot with the lie. “I mean,” he clarifies, “that’s not why I’m annoyed. I just don’t like the idea that Gansey could feel that way and I wouldn’t know.”

“What, so you could make a note of it in your day planner?” Ronan says. “Trust me. He feels that way. And your agricultural tantrum makes me think you _might_ return the feeling.”

“Ronan.” Adam’s throat swells, his eyes so dry they hurt. “I’m not good at this. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what it means to be in a relationship with someone. I don’t know if it's something I can do.”

“ _Whoa,_ ” Ronan says again, holding his hands up. Adam is terribly aware of the fact that the sides of his knees are still pressed against the outsides of Ronan’s thighs. “Try not to pull the fucking cord just yet. I don’t care, okay?” He looks pissed off now, which makes Adam feel a little better.

“You like me,” Adam points out.

“Jesus.” Ronan pushes Adam away with a forearm on his chest and jumps to his feet, his irritation physical, knotting in his arm muscles. Adam gets up slowly after him.

“Don’t put things on me,” Ronan says. “I like you. I don’t like _rules_.” He spits the word like it’s bitter in his mouth.

Adam’s trained to shut down around anger, but fighting with Ronan has never felt dangerous. It’s a relief—Ronan’s hurts spill out of him, whereas Gansey takes his into himself to incubate for decades. Adam knows where he stands with Ronan.

“I don’t understand, then,” he says. “I need rules. I need to know what I’m agreeing to.”

“Dating’s not a contractual obligation.”

Adam tries not to think about how much better he’d feel if they could draw up a contract. The moss around him vibrates with his uncertainty, and he aches to take off his shoes and feel it on his feet.

“I don’t know what you expect from me,” he says, and stops himself from saying the rest: _and I can’t give it to you_. He can’t be someone’s boyfriend. The yawning depth of him was too much for Blue.

Ronan’s shoulders are hunched up, defensive, energy bunched up in his back muscles and pulsing through a vein that stands out where his wrist tapers into a clenched fist. It’s not even about Gansey. What if Adam is never able to relax with Ronan the way Ronan relaxes with him? What if he’s too selfish and preoccupied to put Ronan first?

“I never asked for anything from you,” Ronan says. _I’m hurting him,_ Adam thinks, and swallows again, and the fingers of light that reach through the leaves suddenly feel like they’re blinding him. “I just want to keep doing what we’re doing. You can paste a picture of Gansey’s face on a nearby tree if it makes you feel better.”

“That’s not what I want,” Adam says, frustrated at how impossible it seems to square what he wants Ronan to understand with the way Ronan communicates. If only he knew how to translate this into wrestling.

“What do you want, then?” Ronan’s whole body is closed off from Adam, the openness from before transmuted into the tense line of his neck, the tilt of his shoulders away from Adam. Ronan, like Adam, guards himself closely, but unlike Adam is prone to spontaneity that makes it easier for him to come across as human. Ronan’s self is transient; he decides anew who to be in every second, influenced by people, his mood, the atmosphere, the humidity, whatever. Adam’s already ruined whatever alchemy allowed Ronan to be soft.

They don’t speak the same language. Ronan’s thoughts can be read in his stance, in the position of his hands. Gansey’s thoughts can almost always be read on his face. Adam is unreadable. Weird, cold, alienating. He is closer to being one of the trees than an alive boy like Ronan.

“I don’t know,” Adam says.

Hurt flickers across Ronan’s face, his eyes widening before his forehead creases to cover it.

“You don’t know what you want,” he repeats.

Adam knows how it sounds, and he doesn’t know how to fix it. “I like what we’re doing,” he says. “I’m just not sure what it means. And it doesn’t feel right to go ahead until I know.”

Ronan scowls and kicks a tree root, and then spends a couple seconds shaking out his foot. “I don’t know what _that_ means,” he says.

Adam hates himself for saying what he knows he’s going to say. “I think I need some space apart. To think.”

Ronan’s entire face shutters over, his eyes going blank and his forehead smoothing out into composed flatness. His clenched fingers twitch noticeably. His body is taut as a violin string.

In an instant, the kinetic energy sizzling through Ronan resolves itself into motion. He turns, fluid and sinuous, and storms away in the direction of where they left the BMW. Since Ronan is his ride, Adam follows a few steps behind him, cold as an underwater lake.

They don’t speak again, but Ronan drives too fast all the way back to Henrietta.

-

Blue picks up the phone halfway through the first ring, the harsh tone hanging in the air for an instant before dissipating.

“It is one o’clock in the morning,” she informs the receiver smartly. She sits on the floor, her back against the chair next to the phone, and crosses her legs, resting her right ankle on her left knee, lotus-style.

“We have clocks over here too.” Gansey’s voice through the receiver is crackly, faded, but still full enough of the warm notes that signify his Ganseyness to make Blue’s stomach swoop.

“Glad to hear it,” Blue says. She picks at a chipped bit of nail polish on her big toenail. “I suppose you didn’t think of what would happen if I wasn’t nearby, or wasn’t _awake_ , and the phone rang until it woke up someone else, like my mother.”

“I thought about it,” Gansey says. “I just called anyway.”

Blue makes an irritated noise in the back of her throat to cover the smile that spreads over her face. She leans her head back against the hard seat of the chair.

“What’s the emergency?” she says. “Got a smear of dirt on your gold Rolex?”

“I don’t have a Rolex,” Gansey says, clipped. Blue is only about eighty percent sure he knows she’s joking. “And there’s no emergency. I just... called to say hi.”

Blue’s known him for less than a year (she keeps track, the treacherous deadline filling her head), but she knows him well, and the timbre of his voice dips in a way that indicates he does have something he wants to talk about. It siphons off a little of the unease in her stomach. She observes herself from above: teenage girl giggling into the phone because a boy called her late at night. Knowing there’s some kind of situation to address complexifies the image.

“I’m tired,” she says. “It’s late. I was in bed.” White lie. “So I don’t have time to chat. Did you want to talk about something, or do you just want to breathe heavily into the phone while I fall asleep?”

“Well, you’re making me sound like some kind of... phone booth pervert,” Gansey says, his voice shading noticeably towards the Deep South, possibly to distance himself from a mouthbreathing dirty caller.

“Phone booths don’t exist anymore,” Blue says. “What’s wrong?”

There’s a measured pause. “Nothing’s wrong,” Gansey says. “I wouldn’t say wrong.”

“What’s right, then.”

This time, the pause is even longer. Blue pictures Gansey huddled over his disgustingly expensive phone, weighing the press of his fears in his throat against the emotional tax it will cost him to take Blue into confidence. It’s not just his own vulnerability he’s afraid of, she knows, but the thought of creating a connection with Blue that doesn’t exist with Ronan or Adam or Noah. Gansey is nothing if not even-handed.

“I really like you,” Gansey breathes. Blue’s heart jumps uncomfortably.

“I know,” she says, cautious.

“I can’t not like you. I’ve tried.”

“I know,” Blue says again. It comes out so quiet, she’s not even sure if Gansey can hear.

“It’s just,” Gansey says. Blue imagines him touching his bottom lip, blinking against his glasses. She’s wrung out by affection. She tugs her right ankle a little closer to her hips, crowding in on herself, trying to protect against the hideous feeling.

“Do you ever feel,” Gansey says, “like you care about too many things and you don’t know how to fit it inside you?”

Blue’s already close to bursting apart from this conversation. She doesn’t answer, unwilling to let her voice betray her. She hears Gansey exhale noisily.

“I think I’m in love with Adam,” he says. “ _God_. As well as, you know— _you_ , and Ronan, and maybe Noah too, who knows. Is that possible? I can’t seem to... rein it in.”

Blue almost laughs but pulls it back, her mouth pulling down with the effort. The supernova in her breast burns brighter, and she wraps her free arm around herself, pressing the cool plastic of the phone receiver into her cheek.

“Oh,” she says, “well, yeah, of course.”

“What do you mean?” Gansey says—not annoyed, but bewildered. He’s been seriously working himself into Gansey worry knots about this. Gansey worry knots are probably a fancy kind of knot used on a sailboat.

She’s not sure how to express it, the web of connections between the five of them. She’s not psychic, but sometimes she can almost see it, a fine network of bright threads stringing heart to heart. Thinking about any of the raven boys hurts like a fresh bruise. Gansey already leaks desperation through every crack when he talks about what he wants: Glendower, a legacy, magic. It’s no different when he talks about his friends.

“It’s just—me too,” she says. “We all are, I think. It’s all of us.” She doesn’t know how Gansey, with his neurotic apportioning of his attention so each friend receives the same, missed it. “Adam—he looks at you like—how my mom looks at Calla. Like you’re a part of each other.”

Gansey breathes into the phone, sounding more and more like a phone booth pervert every second.

“And Ronan?” he says.

Blue hesitates.

“The fact that you just asked me to confirm that Ronan Lynch cares about you is _possibly_ the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she says. “Don’t ask me about Noah. Noah’s a mystery. And don’t ask me about me,” she adds. “I’m not going to sit here and argue against your insecurities.”

“I told you how I feel about _you_ ,” Gansey protests.

“I’ve told you before,” Blue says, twisting the phone cord around her finger. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

There’s a pause, and then Gansey sighs. “I think,” he says carefully, every word crisp, every consonant audible, “I’ve been in love with Adam forever. Like, this whole time. I don’t know. I feel like an idiot. Are you upset?”

“You are an idiot,” Blue says. “And no.”

Gansey’s voice is soft. Sleepy. “I didn’t know it was allowed.”

Blue closes her eyes, wishing him here, wishing the curse gone. “It is,” she says. “It’s allowed.”

Gansey makes a soft, aborted noise. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” he says. “Any of it. About them. About you.”

It’s like having a puppy that keeps licking itself until it goes bald; it’s cute, and pathetic, and it makes her so fond she feels her insides melting like taffy.

“Hey,” she says. “It’s late. Maybe you should go to sleep. Have weird Adam sex dreams.”

Gansey makes another noise, one that might be affronted or might be something else. “That’s not funny,” he says.

“I thought it was.”

“You have a terrible sense of humor.”

“That’s what my mom always says too.”

“I'm hanging up,” Gansey says. Gansey never hangs up first. Blue pulls the phone cord straight, and then lets go and watches it bounce back into a coil.

“Being in love isn’t a crisis,” she says, although the pace of her pulse contradicts the words. “You should save your energy for our real problems. For Glendower. Unless you want to kiss him too.”

“I do _not_ ,” Gansey says, in his prissy Aglionby voice that makes Blue forget she likes him.

“Is there a historical reason you’re going to tell me about? Was Glendower bad at kissing?”

“ _No_ ,” Gansey says. “I mean, I don’t know! That’s not in any of the texts!” He trips over the words, shaken to his bookish core.

“Sounds like you haven’t done enough research, then. Or maybe it’ll be up to you to publish that study.”

“I’m hanging _up_ ,” Gansey says, but he still doesn’t. He goes quiet, like maybe she won’t notice.

“Get some sleep,” she says.

“Okay,” he says, and there’s the customary awful stillness when neither of them says any affectionate sign-off words. Silently, Blue kisses her index and middle finger and presses them to the phone receiver.

“Night.”

“Night.”

-

There’s a Persephone-shaped hole in the atmosphere of 300 Fox Way. Her absence is louder than her presence often was, nagging at Adam’s gut every time he turns around and she continues to be gone. It’s just one of the entire library of reasons he didn’t want to come to a sleepover at Blue’s place. He planned to be working that night, whether or not he actually was, but when he said he might be Blue narrowed her eyes and said, “You have to come.”

“I’ll try,” he conceded.

But now he regrets it. Blue’s house is dark at night, like the moonlight doesn’t quite penetrate all the way past the crystals hanging in the windows (“For show,” Blue snorts), and the dusty lights don’t seem to be bright enough. Adam’s walked into a catalogue of his failures. Blue, who he wrecked things with by showing her too much of the dark, ugly side that lurks in him. Gansey, whose presence makes Adam’s chest squeeze tight with panic, like the vines that curled around his wrists in Cabeswater. Ronan, who he still hasn’t talked to. At least things with Noah are okay.

“It’s like truth or dare,” Blue says, kneeling on the wooden floor of the Phone Room. Blue’s room was deemed too small for a sleepover, and anyway, too personal.

“Truth or drink,” Noah amends. “Take a card, answer the question truthfully, and if you don’t want to answer, you have to drink.”

“But only like a sip,” Blue finishes. “Everyone can regulate how much alcohol they want to drink.”

“Right,” Noah says. “For example, I won’t drink any.”

“Where’s the alcohol from,” Ronan says, and Gansey says, “Oh, you know, just some older kids,” with an evasiveness in his tone that means Declan.

Ronan is at least ten times more alive than anyone else in the room. Whatever thing that Noah lacks that makes him faded and unstable, Ronan has an excess of. His skin glows with it, his eyes flashing and bright. Ronan just sitting on a pillow in the Phone Room, one knee pulled up and his chin resting on it, is full of trapped energy, like a lion waiting to pounce. Ronan’s resting state is more vivid than most of what Adam feels in a day; it’s what makes Ronan’s actual emotions so terrifying. He doesn’t look at Adam, but it feels active, not passive. He specifically doesn’t look at Adam. Adam wants to go home.

“Adam.” He looks up to see Gansey holding out a faded china teacup, straight from the kitchen of 300 Fox Way. “What do you want to drink?”

Adam doesn’t drink. “Just give me a Sprite,” he says. Gansey grabs one from the arrangement of bottles and cans on the floor, laid out in the center of their circle like a magic pentagram. He pulls the ring tab and pours it for Adam with a flourish like a bartender from a 1940’s film. Corny, embarrassing Gansey; Adam’s stomach hurts.

Gansey flops down next to Ronan, and Adam moves closer to Noah so they’re in an approximate circle. Noah’s cup is empty. Blue pours herself a neat measure of vodka and finishes it off with Pepsi.

Noah holds up a stack of index cards between his thumb and forefinger. “Here we go,” he says. “A Sargent and Czerny special.” He places the stack next to a bottle of Jager.

“Who goes first?” Gansey asks.

Blue glances at Noah. “Alphabetical order,” she says. “Adam, Blue, Gansey, Noah, Ronan.”

“Or Dick,” Noah says. “Which is the same order anyway.”

“So I’m first,” Adam says. Whatever. It’ll be good to get this over with.

Blue nods. She pushes the little stack towards Adam across the musty floor, and he reaches out and takes the first card off the top. It feels not unlike tarot.

Blue’s spiky handwriting scrawls across the card. There are little loops coming off her _W’s_ and _K’s_.

_Who in this room would you most like to kiss?_

Adam’s fingers tighten on the little slip. His stomach is full of lead. He shouldn’t have come.

“Read it!” Noah calls out, bouncing a little on his knees. The eagerness in his voice makes Adam think he knows exactly what it says already, and he frowns at the slip of paper.

Adam didn’t tell anyone that he and Ronan—broke up, or got in a fight, or whatever, but he doesn’t know if Ronan did. He definitely didn’t tell anyone he was confused about Gansey. Blue and Noah have been so specific about this, insisting that everyone be here, playing a drinking game even though two-fifths of the group don’t drink, and Blue barely does. It feels like a set-up, and it makes him uneasy that he doesn’t know what he’s being set up to do.

He reads the card out loud slowly, buying himself time. Refusing to answer and taking a drink would be damning. There is no safe answer. The question hangs in the air, and it briefly splits Adam’s consciousness; the inhuman part of him registers how the moment hits each person differently, vibrating along with their energies. Gansey leans in minutely, his eyes alive with curiosity, while Ronan retreats, shoulders twitching upward.

Adam waits, and after a few seconds the enhanced awareness fades, the dullness of reality reasserting itself. Adam opens his mouth to speak, still unsure of what to say.

The stillness breaks with a crash as Ronan scrambles to his feet, dislodging the pillow.

“I’m not playing,” he says. He stalks off like the floor has personally offended him, slamming the door to the Phone Room.

The mood broken, Adam comes to life, springing up and following after Ronan, his heart pounding.

300 Fox Way is a rabbit warren, full of odd little closets and slanted ceilings. Adam finds Ronan past a turn of the narrow hallway, leaning against the wall. There’s no time to think about what to say; if he doesn’t act, he’ll lose Ronan for good.

“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice comes out low and soft. Typical Adam, restrained and uncertain; so much less than Ronan and Gansey and Blue, so easily passed over. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries again. “I like you,” he says. “I’m just—scared. I don’t want to break up.”

A beat, and then Ronan’s shoulders slump.

“Parrish,” he says. “Why do you have to think about everything so much?”

“I don’t know,” Adam says. He clenches his fingers, then relaxes them. He’s thought about this, how to explain whatever happened in Cabeswater, too much already. “It scares me that you like me.”

Ronan makes a frustrated noise, a short little growl in his throat. “It doesn’t scare me,” he says.

“I know,” Adam says. That scares him more. What is his role, if not to be careful when Ronan charges ahead? He thinks of the cold metal press of the shopping cart on his legs. He takes a breath.

“I want you,” he says. “And Gansey. I wanted Blue. And I don’t know—where the line is. How much I can ask for.” He almost shudders, remembering Blue’s face when he’d crossed the line and asked for too much.

Ronan takes a moment, his mouth hardening and then twisting, his emotions, as always, physically manifesting as soon as they appear. “I can’t speak for Gansey and Blue,” he says, “but there’s no line for me. You can stop tip-toeing around me like one of the nuns you live with. Fuck’s sake, Parrish”—his voice is rough—”you’re not going to break me. I’m a grown-up, and I can handle my own decisions, and I want you. And I _seriously_ don’t care that you like Gansey. Who wouldn’t. Gansey is _hot_.”

Ronan is so full of warmth. Adam cups a hand against his jaw, feels Ronan’s blood in his veins. Pulls him in and presses a hot kiss to his mouth. Adam’s body lights up, his heart hammering, his lungs contracting, everything pulled into synch, the way the ley line feels when he moves a stone into the correct place. Ronan burns against Adam everywhere they touch: his mouth, his tongue, his hand on Adam’s hip. Adam thinks: _how did I ever think I wasn’t allowed to do this_. The thought collides with the idea of Gansey, and he flinches back without thinking, takes in a shaky breath.

“What now?” Ronan says, exasperated. “Gansey again? Can you please just make out with him so that both of you can be at least seventy percent less tortured around me?”

Maybe it’s being in a house where magic is born, or where he lost someone before he had a chance to figure out how important she was to him. Maybe it’s the general air of high school debauchery, with drinking games and hallway makeouts. Adam feels capable of more than Adam Parrish should be, tired of treading between the lines. _We’re both impossible,_ Ronan said to him once, when this started.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I really want to.”

Ronan grins and bumps his shoulder with a fist.

When they re-enter the Phone Room, it’s to see Gansey’s arms wrapped around Noah’s shoulders, their eyes closed and their mouths engaged. Adam drops Ronan’s hand and Ronan says, “Oh my god.”

They scramble apart. Gansey is flushed bright pink and breathing hard, and Noah’s smudged face spreads into a pleased grin.

“What _happened?_ ” Ronan says. Blue is laughing.

“Gansey answered the question on the card,” she says.

“How drunk are you?” Ronan says to Gansey.

“I’m not!” Gansey protests. Blue holds up his cat mug, tilting it a little so it swishes. It’s full.

“Jesus,” Ronan says, but he sounds impressed.

“Did you guys make out?” Noah says.

“You mean make up,” Gansey says.

“Shut up,” Ronan says, pushing past Adam and throwing himself down on the ground with more force than necessary. Ronan doesn’t blush—he just hits things, even if it’s the floor with his own body.

“It was my question,” Adam says. “On the card.” He doesn’t sit, just grabs his right elbow with his left hand and looks hard at Gansey. Gansey is giddy with post-kiss excitement, his hair mussed and his shoulders loose. Adam feels the same odd separation from what’s happening as he does when Cabeswater calls to him, but Cabeswater is silent. The feeling is coming from Adam. _I can’t believe I’m about to do this._

“That’s right,” Gansey says. “You have to take a drink.”

“No,” Adam says.

Gansey is rich and influential, the prince of Aglionby; Gansey is power and money and everything Adam’s ever wanted to be that he couldn’t have. Gansey is sweet and sincere, fumbling and wrong, brilliant but oblivious, enthusiastic but easily scared. Gansey looks at Adam like it hurts him. Adam misses him when he’s not nearby.

“Gansey,” Adam says. “That’s my answer.” He forces himself not to turn away or retreat. He stands perfectly still, watching Gansey.

Gansey doesn’t startle. Instead he seems to pull himself together, the laughter going out of him, his mouth falling open like he’s just heard something new and shocking about Welsh military history. He blinks rapidly, his eyes wide. “Oh,” he breathes, reverential.

It’s so deeply _uncool_ that Adam wonders how he ever found him intimidating.

“Um,” Gansey says, flushing deeper. For a sick, precarious moment Adam thinks it’s all gone wrong, but then Gansey says, “Same. Um. Yes. Me too. I mean, I don’t mean kiss myself. I mean.” He ducks his head and grabs his cat mug from Blue, taking a large gulp of rum and coke. A cough tries to force its way out, muffled as Gansey clamps his mouth closed around it.

“Okay,” Adam says. That was it, his moment of possibility, and now it’s collapsing into awkwardness. He feels weird being the only one standing.

“Kiss, then,” Blue says bluntly.

“Here?” Gansey says, his voice tinged with panic, glancing around at the Phone Room like it’s indecent.

“Yeah,” Blue says. “Why not?”

It’s way too exposed, way too much of other people seeing parts of Adam he hasn’t fully explored himself. But he’s sick of hiding.

“Yeah,” he says. His heart is pounding so hard he can feel it in his toes.

Gansey stumbles to his feet—stumbles, an almost accidental motion, his limbs barely coming together to execute it successfully. Adam steps forward. His consciousness kicks into a higher gear again and everything slows, the magic buzzing through him and sharpening his senses. Gansey is painted in living color, the green in his eyes shining out from the hazel, hair soft and feathery, features uncertain. Adam can feel the way Gansey’s irregular breath disturbs the air between them, slipping into and out of synch with Adam’s own. He lets his hand brush Gansey’s in slow motion, the lightest touch.

Time crashes back to normal, making it feel like fast-forward when Gansey surges forward and kisses him.

It’s sloppy—they’re misaligned, so Gansey’s tongue hits the corner of Adam’s mouth and his nose collides with Adam’s cheekbone. Adam doesn’t want to move back to correct it, so he just turns his head, fits their mouths together as best he can, gripping at Gansey’s fingers because they’re already right below his hand and he wants to touch him. He tastes rum and mint. Gansey tears his hand away and throws his arms around Adam’s neck, pulling him in tight. Adam grasps the back of Gansey’s shirt.

His heart is a burst of sunlight, his chest too tight to contain it. He pulls back just so he can kiss Gansey again, and then pulls back again to look at his face, lips kissed red and eyes fluttering open at Adam’s gaze. Adam kisses him again. He wants more; he bites clumsily at Gansey’s lower lip, feels Gansey’s grip on him tighten, his breath stutter across Adam’s mouth.

“ _Adam,_ ” Blue’s voice yelps. He jerks back, startled, and disentangles himself.

The room is different. It takes a moment to register how. Shoots of green curl up through the cracks in the floorboards around Adam’s feet: reedy wild grasses, bright and tender pea shoots, ivy so dark it’s almost black. The plants fan out in a circle around him, reaching outward with eager tendrils. Adam lifts a foot. There’s a moss print in the shape of his shoe.

He glances up at Gansey, but Gansey looks delighted. “ _Fantastic_ ,” he says. He crouches down to press on a jewelweed pod with his finger.

“That,” Ronan says, “was really, _really_ hot.”

Adam whips his head around to look at him. He’s returning to reality, and the embarrassment is pressing in. Noah is nodding vigorously.

“You guys are wrecking the Phone Room,” Blue groans. She crawls over to Adam, shooing him away from the little circle of plant life so she can pick at it with her fingers.

“Don’t kill them!” Gansey says. “Don’t you want to know how this works? Aren’t you interested in whether or not they possess any of the properties of Cabeswater? If I could just get my EMF reader—”

“I don’t want the properties of Cabeswater in the middle of my house!” Blue says. “I feel like that would go badly!”

Adam shuffles over to sit down by Ronan, but Ronan is halfway across the room by the time he gets there.

“Noah,” he says, and Noah says “ _yeah!_ ” and Ronan kisses him, soft, lingering, and sweet. Noah’s eyes close and his mouth falls open.

Okay. It is hot.

Blue’s head snaps around. “Come on, guys,” she says. “I can’t participate in this game. It’s not fair.”

Noah makes a mumbled sound against Ronan’s mouth, and then extracts himself and repeats: “Blue.” He waves her over, but Blue scowls, sitting back on her heels.

“Not after you’ve been kissing Ronan,” she says. “Brush your teeth first.”

“I can’t, I’m a _ghost_ ,” Noah says plaintively.

“Hey,” Ronan protests. “Why is my saliva grosser than ghost saliva?”

“Don’t talk about your saliva,” Blue says. “I don’t want to interact with your saliva, okay?”

Ronan springs to his feet and strides over to her. He holds out a hand and pulls her up, and then leans over and licks all the way up her cheek. Blue yells and claps her hand to her cheek, and then yells again and smears her palm over her shirt. Her foot lashes out and connects with Ronan’s ankle.

“Your first mistake,” Gansey says, straightening up behind them, “was letting Ronan get too close.”

“Don’t lecture me,” Blue snaps.

“I’m just offering some friendly advice!”

“Is anyone else going to make out,” Noah complains, “or are we done? Because I was hoping we weren’t done.”

“Kiss Adam,” Ronan says, waving a hand.

Adam stiffens. “You can’t tell people to kiss me.”

“Sorry,” Ronan says. “You _should_ kiss Adam, if he wants.”

Adam gets it—he’s the one who hates when they spend time together without him, but he’s also the one who isolates himself, who isn’t just going to grab a friend and kiss them. So Ronan’s trying to pull him in without Adam having to ask. He gets it. Fuck it.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. Noah looks delighted.

Noah’s mouth is cool and dry. He’s not as eager as Gansey, so the kiss is slower, more exploratory, the tip of Noah’s tongue on Adam’s lower lip. Adam’s hand winds up on Noah’s bony knee. Noah is so brittle and compact: is it because he’s dead, or something about his personality? He feels real and solid right now, despite the fact that Adam is the only one breathing into the kiss.

When they pull back, Noah presses a quick peck to Adam’s nose. Adam blinks awake. This is a newer, sweeter way to lose himself.

Then he turns around.

Ronan is _on top_ of Gansey on the floor. Gansey’s chin is tilted up, and one of Ronan’s hands is pressing down one of his wrists. Their chests and hips are flush; Gansey’s hand pushes up the bottom of Ronan’s shirt. It looks like a scene from a movie Adam would be embarrassed to watch with his grandparents.

“Jesus hell,” Adam says, taken aback.

“I know.”

Adam turns his head and Blue is there, sitting cross-legged and gripping her ankles. She’s watching the Ronan and Gansey spectacle with her head tilted sideways, her interest cool and speculative.

“You’d think they would have made out way before now,” she says. “I definitely thought they had.”

Adam’s job is to fix things. Cars and ley lines. Whatever’s between him and Blue has been broken for a long time, and it’s not going to be fixed by kissing.

It’s kind of a relief. There’s not a hint of sexual tension to raise the alarm as Adam leans towards her a fraction.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “About how we ended things. I messed up.”

Blue glances over at him. “You did,” she agrees. “But I forgive you.”

Another piece of tension trapped up inside him snaps and melts away. Adam feels warm and almost whole.

It only lasts for a moment before Noah elbows Blue and says, “What _are_ your feelings on ghost saliva?”

“Positive, as long as you don’t call it that,” Blue says.

-

In the end only Ronan and Gansey get drunk, but they get elaborately drunk. Gansey protests the whole time that he's not getting drunk. Ronan just laughs blackly.

As the night winds down, Gansey ends up with his head in Adam’s lap. It’s touching, but Adam’s also not entirely sure Gansey can stand.

“Adam,” Gansey says. “I’m drunk.”

“I can see that,” Adam says. He brushes the hair away from Gansey’s forehead with his fingertips.

“I didn’t mean to be drunk. It just happened.”

“It happens when you drink,” Adam agrees.

“Adam,” Gansey says, turning his face into Adam’s knee. “I’m worried I won’t remember kissing you. You have to kiss me again tomorrow so I remember.”

Adam’s mouth twists. “Okay,” he says. He rests his hand on Gansey’s overheated cheek.

“Hey,” Ronan’s voice calls from the middle of the room. Blue and Noah are holed up behind the phone table, doing something that involves a lot of soft whispering and giggling sounds. “These are all the same.”

“What’s the same?” Adam says.

Ronan’s crouched on the floor. In one hand he has an almost-empty bottle of honey whiskey; in the other, a handful of index cards from the stack. “The questions. They’re all about who you’d hook up with.”

The area behind the phone table goes conspicuously silent.

“Was this a trick?” Ronan demands.

Noah pokes his head out. “Not a trick,” he says. “Just. A helpful suggestion? A nudge in the right direction?”

“Everyone was making things so complicated,” Blue adds.

“Jane!” Gansey calls out. “Come over here so I can pretend to kiss you.”

“Go to sleep, Gansey,” Blue says.

“Noah?” Gansey tries.

“Busy,” Noah says, ducking back behind the table with Blue. “Tomorrow, though.”

Gansey breathes wetly on Adam’s thigh. Adam’s seized by a form of happiness so pure it feels like sadness. These are the only people who’ve made him feel safe; the only people who’ve managed to carve out space for themselves in the density of his life.

There are words for that, Adam knows, words for the way you feel when it hurts almost as much to be around someone as it does to be apart from them. There’s a word for how he feels when Gansey grabs his hand to pull him into Cabeswater, or when Ronan makes some kind of excuse to hang back and walk Adam to his place rather than riding back with Gansey to Monmouth. There’s a word for feeling like you’ve been hit by a car when you see your friends’ faces turn toward you. There are words Adam’s never had a reason to use before, so he doesn’t use them now, too afraid of what they could mean. He just watches Gansey’s eyes flutter as he falls asleep.

“Parrish.” Ronan’s suddenly next to him, his face animated in drunkenness and general Lynch passion for life. “Move over.” He gets down on the floor and curls up with his head on Adam’s thigh, nuzzling Gansey’s head out of the way.

“I’m not a mattress,” Adam complains.

“No shit, you’re bony as fuck,” Ronan says. “G’night.”

“Don’t pass out on me.”

“I’m not, I’m just going to sleep,” Ronan says. He makes a big show of yawning noisily.

Adam leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. He is, actually, extremely tired. For a second he lets himself enjoy the fact that there’s nothing for him to worry about right now, nothing to do. Maybe he really could fall asleep sitting up on the floor at Blue’s house.

Cabeswater beckons to him, the feeling of wet lichen and ferns and warm sunlight and good, growing energy. A different reality, or a piece of reality that feels different. Maybe it’s just a dream.

It doesn’t matter. He lets go.

  
  



End file.
